Because they had doubts themselves as we all do from time to time with our choices and they desperately needed to prove they made the right choice. I really do think sometimes this is what causes "helpfulness" but you were good to go with your gut. Not looking up to you??? Wow, that is so offensive. Women who sacrifice career to raise a family are my heroes. I was a daycare raised kid myself and my older two were in daycare from 3 on. We turned out ok despite that exposure but I actually have trauma from my years in daycare. That probably sounds extreme but is actually true. My boys were really shy and anxious from their time in daycare. They outgrew it but I don't see that insecurity with my current 3 at all who have never done anything more than a few days of pre-k enrichment each week.

https://www.parentingscience.com/daycare-centers.html Yep, we can all find support for our beliefs when we want to right? Social sciences never lets us down my continually proving and disproving everything over and over in a cyclical pattern as decades roll on. Articles love to play on parental insecurities and can truly lead us astray.

I know this wasn't intended for me but I feel Callista and I have a similar take on this. I have twins and one is doing ATFF and the other is doing CAP Fable I. It is perfect for his 2nd grade brain. It chunks it in a way that he can easily tackle and makes him feel like his sister who is doing higher level progym stuff. MP Classical Comp I feel is a much more thorough program. It goes deep and kids camp on topics to master them. W&R jumps around BUT I have seen huge gains in my 2nd graders writing with it so I am going to let him go as far as he likes with it. We will probably jump over to MP or CW though at some point for him.

I love "Find the Constellations" by HA Rey(sp?) for that age. They have a Curious George edition as well. Also using cardboard coasters and hole punching constellations into them and then using a flashlight to cast them on the wall is neat. I do agree though, the MP astronomy and myths is my favorite combo.

What in the heck is going on with those giant smiley faces! they won't let me edit them out. Those things are terrifying

https://iew.com/help-support/resources/articles/iew-classical This answers question 2 far more succinctly than I could. Anyone who has taught both programs though can readily see the overlap of the progym in IEW. I would say IEW succeeds at taking the obscure progym that might otherwise scare someone off and makes it accessible to teachers while also hitting some of those more familiar elements of teaching writing. Edited to add your question about how they acquire the same skills. That statement is somewhat based on an assumption very few people make it all the way through the progym. I want to send gold medals to homeschool families that do Most people tend to tank around Chreia/Maxim and I feel IEW does a solid job folding in those skills. If you can make it through the progym your child will be far above what IEW brings to the table. If you don't stick with the progym, IEW + Killgallon, or WWS, or another other myriad of great options will develop a solid writer. One thing I did when I first started teaching writing was make a list of goals for my kids by the time they cleared my door for college. That allowed me to see what steps I would need to take to get them there. Writing can feel daunting for sure. There are many ways to get your child ready and one thing we have as homeschoolers is a TON of writing curriculum choices.

I am going to answer 1. and 3. because that is easier to answer and then I will post the 2. response separately because it is a bit more detailed. So question 1....do you happen to have the MP grade 3 schedule? If not no worries but it helps to see how it is laid out. You are right that they don't complete the whole book . Those exercises directly prepare the students to have a solid foundation moving into classical comp fables but it isn't absolutely necessary to be successful at classical comp fable. ATFF have components that are helpful in doing some of the following...reading a short non fiction passage and building an outline by pulling out keywords. This helps kids start to understand the main idea and most critical elements to summarize information. This key outline is then used for the child to narrate back to you what they read. If their outline is good they can easily retell the whole thing using it. Elocution is brought in as kids are asked to tell it to other members of the family and so forth. This eventually progresses to writing from outlines which happens subtlety. By the time you get to narrative stories kids have learned "banned words" and learned to replace them with more interesting adjectives, adverbs and strong verbs. It works on openers, story sequence elements, who which clauses etc. There is alot crammed into ATFF. MP 3rd ends around leason 7 and partly due to how long it takes to go through some lessons. For example, in week 22 you start lesson 6 Damocles and the King by outlining part 1 and brainstorming, week 23 you continue to work on that same thing with part 2, week 24 still outlining the next part 3 and then in week 25 the child writes section 1, week 26 writes section 2, week 27 writes section 3, week 28 edits all sections, week 29 starts the final draft, week 30 completes the final draft. So for 2 months they are working on one lesson. It is definitely not for kids that are writing quicker but nothing says you cannot go faster and finish the whole book. We certainly are and my guy is on the spectrum in 2nd grade. 3. BJU...I find the progym to be complete if you carry it through for the long haul. I am not entirely sure we will. I want to, I endeavor to, but you know best laid plans and all...so I just cover all of my bases so that when they take standardized tests through their umbrella school in the here and now they can do it. If they didn't test I might not worry about it because classically trained students in writing excel at the college level in writing. All of these elements fall into place as they go. It is just the progym is a series of exercises and so it might seem a child is slightly behind peers in the early grades but will zoom past them by middle school.

This is hilarious 😂 I feel the socialization stigma comes up alot but I am confused as to why this is a thing. In PS, kids are in a classroom the majority of the day where they are not interacting with peers but sitting in desks. When they do get their 15 min recess break and 30 min lunch break you are looking at maybe a grand total of an hour of interaction per day. Maybe more if they ride a bus. They then come home and most are not going out to play outside with friends, they are plopping themselves in front of homework and screens. Meanwhile, at least in my little utopian homeschool community, our kids are typically done with work and lunch by 1pm where we then will do enrichment afternoon classes with friends, get in groups to run projects, free play at the park and so forth. A couple days per week we attend an umbrella school where they take high interest classes in theater, cooking, art, science etc and they get all of the free play they need and want. My kids have learned how to interact with multiple teachers, multiple homeschool parents, new kids they meet in various classes, it is amazing. They chat with ease to adults and kids of various ages. They also have not adopted the negative coping skills and low self esteem that can plague many kids in the PS system when their area school is underperforming. It just truly baffles me that "social skills" is the thing that gets thrown around as if 30 same aged kids in a classroom learning pecking order Lord of the Flies style is the end all and be all of social prowess.

ATFF can be done without any other exposure to IEW but my preference is SWI if I had to pick one. Still, I have found alot of value in the themed books, especially for a homeschool who isn't necessarily interested in doing the whole program. My older son did SWI when he was in high school and got alot out of it. My DD has done IEW Myths, Fables and Fairy Tales as a 3rd grader and loves it. One of my 2nd graders worked through half of ATFF so far this year and it has been a pretty good fit for him as well.

Intro to comp is entirely based on WWE (narration, copywork and dictation) so if WWE won't work them intro to comp won't either. Plus, if you are planning to use the MP lit guides (Farmer Boy, Charlotte's Web, Mr. Poppers Penguins and Paddington) then it might be a bit repetitive for your student especially if you follow lit guide teachings to have your 3rd grader narrate good sentences and copy them. IEW ATFF is actually fun and easy to teach. It isn't full IEW, it is intro into some of the basics and a really good foundation for classical writing Fable. Plus MP only schedules it about once per week so it is low pressure for 3rd. Don't feel worried at all about teaching classical comp. Seriously, it is really straightforward once you start doing it and I love to see the amazing blossoming in writing that happens when kids start it. I also 2nd IEW being a really wonderful way to build some solid writing skills. Keep in mind that it is based on classical writing progym though so if you go through the progym your kids will be acquiring all of the same skills just in a different way. I have said this before on here but we do classical writing during the school year and then work through 6 of the 8 writing lessons in BJU English 3 during the summer and then do it again with English 4 the next summer. It probably isn't necessary but it makes me feel like I am building in those basics (letter writing, 3 paragraph essay, book report etc).

I feel pretty content and blessed in my life but I do wish we had jobs that allowed us to not have to live in expensive cities and didn't rack up so much student loan debt when we were young. Those two things would make a drastic difference in our cost of living and overall financial comfort. I would also love to travel more. That would be heavenly. Seriously though, I get to homeschool our darling children and have a choice to work or not because of my spectacularly wonderful husband whom I adore. I have a roof over my head and can provide a good life for my kids. I can't complain.

The lady at our goodwill said a couple of weeks back "well...I guess since they are younger it doesn't matter they aren't getting much of an education now but when do you plan to send them to real school?" 😂 Sadly, on the drive home I came up with many snappy comebacks but in the moment I was just hoping my poor kids didn't hear her comment as we bought STACKS of high interest science and history books.

Writing and Rhetoric Fables I has been a total blessing for my 7 year old this year. He loves it and I have seen his writing really begin to mature this year. The exercises are fun and can be broken up so that they don't feel cumbersome. It is not repetitive but does come back and practice skills over; it is just done in such a way that doesn't feel laborious. I REALLY love it.

This is fantastic information. Thank you for saying this. It is what my gut has always told me but I have jumped on board early Latin instruction and find it hard to fit in and around our other cores. I feel like this lets me off the hook from feeling guilty if we don't get to it.

I have to give a thumbs up to MP enrichment. I have both the full 2 and 3 cores and the enrichment books. Honestly, the mammal science is more or the same in terms of their typical guides (lots of comp questions and draw a pic stuff) but the enrichment guide is so luscious. You get to read fabulous, high quality picture books with ample oral comp questions and vocab. They then pair it seamlessly with music pieces, art studies and history/science studies. I find it perfect for the 2nd/3rd crowd. I LOVE them. We have an Amazon echo which makes playing the music selections super easy. We did buy both the art cards and posters because I found hanging up a print each week really helped with card recall and they enjoyed it.

My parents didn't help at all. I just figured it out by calling and talking with enrollment counselors. I got in to my state college which handed to be a really good one so it allowed me to continue living in my off campus apartment and commuting. I look back now and think "Man, I was a determined 18 year old" 😂 even after being in my career for decades my mom still doesn't full grasp what I do or what my degrees are in. I was a first generation college graduate in my line though so I don't hold it against them 😉

We got double what we got back last year with no change in income from last year so it definitely was a pleasant surprise.

Love Samantha Carr books for many of those. My son also liked John Calvin What is the Truth?

There is another show I watched recently where each episode was a different brainwashing situation (scientology, spousal brainwashing, Christian cults, socialist cult etc) and the prophet situation was on there more than once. One was particularly shocking. I think the most mindboggling one though was a husband who had convinced his wife that her dad had molested her and that she was also abusing her kids. I was in tears for her. Brainwashing is truly terrifying because like someone said, it is indeed a boiling frog scenario.

Yes, I had immediate irritation and anger at the parents but when the dad was so tearful and horrified over letting himself be sexually seduced by him I could see absolute grief and bewilderment in him.

I watched it on Amazon last year and had the same response. The brainwashing didn't surprise me as she was so young and he was incredibly manipulative. What shocked me was the parents trust when he didn't come back with their daughter the first time 😳 and then they continued to trust this man. There seemed to be a high level of guilt though from them all being sexually involved with him in some way. It was one of the weirdest documentaries I have ever watched.

Just got an email from them and they said exams were mailed out today from Ohio for those of you also waiting 🙂

Thanks everyone! They must just be running behind. We have been under a bit of snow in WA so I wanted to make sure it wasn't just us.

Is anyone having their child take the NME (National Mythology Exam) or have they taken it before? I registered my 3rd grader ages ago and have heard nothing. I notice the it starts in 7 days and am wondering if this is normal. 🤔

It is the exact same response he gets after getting sick with a bad head cold or any other virus. I can only imagine what getting an active virus like measles or chickenpox would do to him then. He is lovely and splendid once the inflammation goes away and with each progressive year, his recovery is shorter, lighter and less extreme. I actually think the vaccine inflammation in small doses has allowed his body to become better capable of responding effectively to the inflammation over time. He went from non verbal, no eye contact and with a diagnosis of what they believed would be significant effects of autism to being a highly verbal, highly intelligent and somewhat quirky little 8 year old. His doctors have all been floored by him and knowing what I know about brain inflammation (I previously worked in research and DH still is a neurobiologist) we both believe our choice was a good one.